Regret
by Gandalf3213
Summary: Moving in with Kurt and his dad was harder for Finn than anyone realized, and it just added another problem on the already teetering pile. But he still shouldn't have said what he said, or done what he'd done. Set after the blowout in Theatricality.
1. Puck

**Noah Puckerman**

_"Many of us cricify ourselves for two things: ****__Regret__ for the past and fear for the future." **Fulton Ousler**_

"This seriously sucks, dude."

Finn was throwing his stuff into a couple of cardboard boxes. Literally throwing, like he didn't care at all where it went. I wouldn't mind – most of my stuff is crap anyway, except for my clothes and trophies, but Finn's usually neater than I am. Much neater. He was seriously pissed if he wasn't being a good little boy and folding nicely.

He turned, hand still grabbing onto a pair of boxers. For emphasis, I guess. "This isn't fair! We've lived here since before I was born – my _dad_ lived here – and she wants to go move in with _them_? She's known him for _two months_!"

"Yeah." Of course, when I said that it seriously sucks, I wasn't talking about Finn's moving. With Finn gone, there'd be no place close enough for me to crash if my house became too hot to handle. I'd have to ride out the storm at home or bum it out in my car, which would totally cramp my style. "And I guess it would be -"

"And it'll be so _weird_!" Finn cut me off, this time holding a faded Beatles T-Shirt. "I mean, yeah, living in another house will be weird, but I'll be living in _Kurt's_ house!"

"Major Gaydar." I agreed, picking up a Gameboy Color that had been tossed about in the wreckage and checking to see if its batteries still worked. No dice. I tossed it in with everything else Finn owned.

"Yeah." Finn agreed, dropping the exclamation points and collapsing on his bed with a billion hours of pent-up rage already spent. Finn doesn't rage, at least not for very long. He dies quieter than that. "And, you know, whatever. Be gay."

"But he totally -"

"But Kurt totally has a crush on _me_." Finn sat straight up and I caught his eye, exasperated. He looked at least a little embarrassed. "Sorry. You were saying?"

"Man, the fag's been all over you since day one. That's why we started dumping him in the trash cans in the first place." I had noticed Kurt's obvious lust before Finn, of course. The guy always is the most dense one at the party. "Maybe we should start again."

"What?" The mention of dumpster-diving, which had been every jock's – including high-and-mighty Finn's – favorite sport, seemed to bring him crashing back from the high of self-pity. "No. I mean…yeah, he's probably one of the most annoying kids in school, but throwing him in a dumpster will just make the room we'll be sharing smell."

I snorted at that, "Good point, dude." Then I paused, "You're sharing a room with him?"

Finn groaned, flopped back on the bed, and threw a stuffed animal in a low, flying arc towards me. "Don't even mention that. I try to think about it as little as possible."

I quirked an easy smile. I could totally make life hell for Finn at school, but we'd been in this uneven truce since the whole Qunn/Finn/me baby triangle was thrust into the limelight. And I liked having Finn as my best friend. His mom practically raised me.

And, as my duty of best friend, I managed to clear my throat and inject some humanity into the jock persona I embodied to a tee. Because sometimes it took the sentimental Glee shit to get through to Finn. "Dude, do you really think this move is getting to you because of big gay Kurt?"

Finn opened an eye and stared at me, then sighed. "No."

I'd known Finn since…oh, probably first grade. We were in the same class and were put on the same squad on PeeWee football. They'd experimented with me as center that year, and Finn had been stuck with his permanent position as QB. They moved me to his blind side later, when Coach realized that we had the worst running back in Ohio and needed Finn not to be knocked over every time he dropped back to pass. I didn't mind. I liked going toe-to-toe with someone trying to take out my best friend. We bonded over drills and water breaks.

It also helped that I'd showed up at his door one night, six and bleeding from my nose, with a mysterious broken arm. I bet Finn doesn't remember sharing his bed with me that night. I bet he doesn't remember me flitting in and out of his house for two years, living there more often than not. But I remember those things.

So now I try harder, even if getting him to find his true feelings (and all that other gay Glee shit) is like pulling teeth.

"My dad lived here." Finn muttered.

"Dude, you didn't know him." But I made these words as quiet as possible. Almost gentle. There was a lot of us out there who could form that never-knew-your-dad club. At least Finn's mom was pretty sane.

"I know I never met him, but if we move…and then mom's probably gonna want to marry this guy…I'm too old to have a step-family." Finn glanced at me, a quick, unsure glance that I knew meant he was going to delve deep into the territory of total chick-flick moments. "I mean, why can't we just stay like this?"

"Dunno, man."I hoisted one of his boxes, then another. "C'mon, we'll get the manual labor over with and then get hammered." It was the weekend. It should totally be legal for teens to drink alcohol during the weekend.

But Finn shook his head slowly. "I promised mom I'd go to dinner with her and Kurt and his dad." He looked like he'd just been told he could never play football again. Or sing.

Weird that we now valued singing right up there with our football skills. Never thought _that_ would happen.

So…well, I was trying to be nice to Finn. I liked this truce thing we had going on. Maybe we could even bond over Glee like we had over football.

And we made fun of Kurt for being gay. Ugh.

"Want me to come with you? We can discreetly make fun of the conversation by texting under the table."

Finn probably knew how much it took for me to get those words out, because he managed to smile without looking like he was marching to his death. "Thanks, but I guess I have to get used to them sometime."

"Remember, you got to hit them where the refs can't see." This was a reference to our first football season, where we lost every single game and somehow made it into the playoffs. Coach kept telling us to foul as much as we could without the refs noticing. It had become our motto when whaling on the people we bash: nothing happened if there's no bruises.

"Hopefully it won't come to that." Finn stared at me awkwardly, then put out a hand in a way that made everything more awkward. "Drop by the house sometime. I don't think Kurt will play Madden with me."

"I think you're right." I didn't shake his hand – we weren't old enough for that. But if he ever tells anyone about the hug I have no problem at all with taking him down.

"Swing by if things get bad. Kurt's dad's pretty cool. I don't think he'll have a problem with you crashing on the couch."

This made me feel simultaneously hot and cold in that weird, warm way you get when someone unexpectedly offers you a gift. I'd been hoping that Finn hadn't noticed me creeping in at night, trying to hide my shaking. "Thanks man."

Finn quirked a smile, hoisted up the box higher on his side, and disappeared down the steps. After a second of letting myself breathe, I followed him. Maybe this move wouldn't be so catastrophic after all.

**Hey everyone. So we decided that we needed to write more about Glee - there's this whole new plot line with Kurt and Finn that is just begging for stories. We know it's just the tiniest bit AU, but who knows when the awesome writers will get around to backstories and explanations? It won't be nearly as long as __****Only the Good**** (and for those of you who haven't read it, just know it's long and involved), only four chapters, but it should bring us all up to the real start of summer.**

**And it may even sustain us when there's no more new Glee episodes on Tuesdays.**

**Anyway, pleace review.**


	2. Finn

**Finn Hudson**

_Make the most of your _regrets_; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To _regret_ deeply is to live afresh. **Henry David Thoreau**_

There were a couple of reasons why I didn't want to stay at this house a second longer.

One: my mother. She's totally behaving like a love-sick…whatever. It's wrong and it's creeping me out. She looks at Kurt's dad like he's…ugh. I can't even think about it. I can't even _pretend_ I'm thinking about it. The whole situation makes me want to puke. Or cry. I know I never knew my dad, but she's been going out with this guy for _two months_ and has already gotten rid of everything that is my father. To have no tangible evidence that I was, in fact, fathered by _someone_ is incredibly…depressing.

Two: Puck. Somehow, we made up after the whole him-getting-my-girlfriend-pregnant thing. Quinn went to live with her sister in an apartment on the outskirts of town and me and Puck avoided each other for a few weeks. Until he ended up on my porch swing.

Puck's mother was…well. Crazy. The kind of crazy where she'll occasionally think Puck is either her long-gone husband or a thief trying to rob her of everything she owns, so she either hits on him or beats the crap out of him. And you can say a lot of things about Puck, but he has never, not in the years since I've known him, hit his mother when she goes on one of her rages.

My mother says it's dementia. I think she just cracked when Puck's dad walked out. Either way, Puck spent most of his childhood with us, or else he'd come to school shaking or breaking. Leaving my old neighborhood – leaving Puck – made me uneasy.

Of course, we all have cars now. We couldn't drive when we were six.

Three: The room. I don't even have words to describe this freakin' room. It's probably the gayest place I've ever walked into, and for an instant I thought that perhaps Kurt thought he was rooming with Quinn or Brittney. But he was staring at me…

Hummel's house of weird is something you can only take for so long. I couldn't deal with my mom leaving our house and my dead dad. I couldn't deal with moving away from Puck just as we were starting to get tight. I couldn't deal with school and Glee and basketball shit. And I definitely couldn't deal with the resident gay kid to be hitting on me in the place that was now my house.

And so everything blew up at once. Every thought came bursting to the surface until I was standing across from Kurt and _yelling_. "You know," I said, serious, staring at him, "You know that I'm talking about, don't play dumb." I drove in for the kill, no longer in control of the words that had been gushing to the surface for months. "Why can't you just accept that I'm not _like_ you?"

"I _have_ accepted that." Kurt retaliated, looking hurt and as angry as I'd seen him. Except Kurt got soft when he got angry, like my mother, like Quinn. I could never master that softness. Everything, everything about me at that moment was loud and angry, like red jagged lines across a clean piece of paper.

"No, you haven't," I pressed closer, drawing on the room for emphasis. "You think I don't notice the way you look at me? How you get…so flirty around me? You think I don't know why you got so excited that we were going to be moving in together?" It had been Puck who pointed it out, Puck who saw his eyes glued to me in every class. The day after he noticed that, he slammed Kurt into the trashcan and sat on the lid. I didn't stop him. I might have even laughed.

"It's just a room, Finn! We can redecorate if you want to!" I rolled my eyes, shifted impatiently, because the room was everything but the point. It was just the straw that broke the camel, and this camel had been handling too much recently.

Puck and his mother. Quinn being a mother. My status with the jocks slipping by the day. Even Rachel had abandoned me for someone else. And now…

"Fine." _Puck, Quinn, football-basketball-baseball-jocks, Rachel, Kurt_. Again my voice got louder, until I didn't recognize it. Until the words that were coming out weren't mine at all. "Then the first thing that needs to go is that _faggy_ lamp!" I pretended not to notice his cringe. This was coming out now, and Kurt was the perfect target. Hadn't he had this coming for years? "And then we need to get rid of this _faggy_ couch blanket!"

Except I never got that far. A booming yell, and even I was cringing. "Hey!" Burt – he'd told me to call him Burt but all that came out was _sir_, at least out loud, "What did you just call him?"

I glanced at Kurt, then we both looked at his dad. I was angry, and it was (Puck/Quinn/jocks/dad/moving/Kurt) that got me like that, but…sometimes Kurt was my friend. Sometimes. I wouldn't call him…had I called him…?

"No, I didn't call him anything, I was just talking to the blanket…" I was fidgeting, because now the heat in my face was wearing off and I could see Kurt standing there in that dumb-ass suit, looking shocked and more than a little hurt. Had I done that?

Burt stepped closer, his hand up in an accusing finger. "You use that word, you're talking about him." I wanted to step back, to get away from this conversation that was too surreal and sudden to happen.

Kurt's voice murmured from the doorway, eyes wide and distraught. He looked like he had less of an idea that this would happen than I did. "Relax, dad, I didn't take it that way."

"Yeah, that's because you're sixteen and you still assume the best in people." He talked over his shoulder to Kurt when he said that and I took that opportunity to take a large step back, away from this kind of wrath. "You live a few years…you start seeing the hate in people's hearts. Even the best people." He stared, hard, and I squirmed. "You use the n-word?"

What? "No, of course not." I wasn't racist, never had been. I thought of Matt as one of my best friends. I admired Mercedes for her voice, for her ability to stand up to Rachel and speak her mind. I caught beef with white and black kids alike for being in Glee, and even if I thought a black kid was being a jerk, I would never toss around the n-word.

"Yeah?" He plowed forward, an agenda coming to the fore, and I tried my best to look for a way out of this conversation. "How about 'retard'? You call that nice girl on Cheerios with Kurt," I noticed how he nodded at his son, "You call her a retard?"

For a random second I thought he was talking about Brittney. "Becky?" I'd always liked Becky, would even keep some of the other jocks from making fun of her behind her back. "No," I was flustered, "she's my friends she's got…Down Syndrome…I'd never call her that..that's cruel…" I was floundering, grasping at straws. I wasn't a bad person – I _wasn't_ – it was _Kurt_ and his strange ideas, his awful, terrible, freakin' abysmal timing.

Burt advanced and I shrank again. "But it's okay to come into my house and say _faggy_?"

"But..that's not what I meant…" And it _wasn't_. Kurt can be gay, whatever, but living with him creeped me out. I wanted to point out that he would never put me in a room with a teenage girl who had a crush on me, but the words were swallowed by the terrifying expression on Burt's face.

"I know what you meant!" he yelled. Kurt cringed and turned his face away, and even from this distance I could tell he was embarrassed, relieved, hurt. His expression made me swallow hard before facing Burt head-on.

"What, you think I didn't use that work when I was your age? Some kid gets clocked in practice we tell him to _stop being such a fag, shake it off_. We meant it the exact same way you meant it. That being gay is wrong, and it's some sort of punishable offense." Except…did I mean it like that? I ragged on Kurt, yeah, and threw him into trash cans and pushed him against the wall, or at least I used to before I joined Glee, but it never really seemed to hurt him.

"I really thought you were different Finn. You know, I thought that being in Glee club and being raised by your mom, that you were some kind of new generation of dude that came into the world _knowing_ what it took me _years_ of struggling to figure out."

I don't really know what kind of dude I am.

"I guess I was wrong. I'm sorry Finn, but you can't…can't stay here." I didn't gape because at that point I wasn't really surprised, but Kurt's voice came up, cracking and sad from behind his father, "Dad…"

"I love you mom," Burt said, and I hung my head, waiting for this to be over, praying to get out and get away from this person he perceived me as, this person I hoped to God I hadn't become. "And maybe this will cost be her. But my family comes first. I can't have that kind of poison around." I moved to sidle past him and Burt suddenly turned around, face full of emotion. Not rage, just…sorrow. "This is our home, Kurt." He turned back to me, eyes wet and wild. "He is my son. Out in the world, you do what you want, but not in my house."

What do I do? I looked around, tried to lock eyes with Kurt but found even I didn't have the strength for that. I didn't bother with my clothes, with the few boxes Puck had helped me carry over just a few days before. I ran up the stairs, away from the problems, away from Kurt, away from the person I Burt accused me of being.

**One: Season finale...need I say more? Two: Yes, it is pretty much the dialogue verbatum, but that happens to be an epic episode and a gripping scene. There's a little more expansion, not much.**

**And, as always, please review.**


	3. Puck II

**Noah Puckerman**

_Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, for everyone can see and few can feel. Everyone sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are._ **_Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince_**

The frantic text came just as I was trying to persuade my mother to eat. For the past couple of days, she's been convinced that the grocery boy has been trying to kill her by slipping poison into her food.

"You want me to die too, don't you?" I backed away because she was holding a knife absent-mindedly, her eyes not on my but on _Jeopardy_. "Well I won't have it, and I won't eat until that boy is brought to justice!"

_That boy_ was Mike Chang, who didn't have the guts to say boo to a goose even if he did have the time or inclination to slowly poison my mother. I sighed, backed away, horrible thoughts flitting across the surface of my mind. Yes, I did want her to die. No, I didn't care if she starved herself to death.

I must be the worst son ever.

When my cell phone vibrated in my pocket, Finn's drama was a welcome distraction. I slipped out of the house after sliding the knife out of mom's grip and turning off the pilot light on the stove. One time I came home from a football game to find the curtains on fire while my mother sat, entranced by a rerun of _The Price is Right_.

I drove over to meet Finn, who had, as I learned later, run out of the Hummel house without his keys or shoes. "Get in, bum."

He yanked open the door, talking before he'd even slid in the door. "Am I an awful person?"

"Yes," I said reflexively, jokingly, not even looking at him. It was a comment any person might make to their best friend. But when I heard his sharp intake of breath I turned, one hand on the steering wheel. "What happened?"

"I…" Finn swallowed hard, stared out the window, blinking fast, "I think I just got kicked out of my house."

I snorted, looking at the road long enough to swerve out of the way of a cat. Finn couldn't get a detention if he asked for one. He was Burt Hummel's favorite person – Finn hangs out at the auto shop after school, goes to baseball games on weekends, talks football at dinner. He was a father's wet dream.

"I'm serious," and his voice, high and pained and kind of scared made me realize that he _was._

"How?"

And so he told me…everything. Picking a fight with Kurt, him actually yelling back, then everything, everything, that had happened between them in the last couple of months coming out in the open. "I didn't think I was a bad person." Finn kept saying, "But I do think of Kurt as a fag and I do act differently around him."

"That's normal, man." I assured him. And I thought it was. It's always weird enough when a girl you don't like has an enormous crush on you, but when it's a _boy…_ "And it's not like we kick his ass anymore."

"Don't stop it from being kicked either." Finn said, "I mean…Puck, I've only been living with him for what? A week? Three of those days he came home and changed because he didn't want his dad to see the blood on his shirt. He can't cover up the bruises, though."

There was a silence, which Finn broke quietly. "I think I really hurt Kurt, man. What I said to him was pretty bad."

"He can take it. He's one tough dude." Which is about as close as I'll ever come to complimenting Kurt Hummel. "But, Finn." I pulled over to the side of the road, "He can't kick you out of the house. It's the only one you've got." Glee had already gone through a crazy spell trying to find a home for Quinn. Another displaced teen would fill us to capacity.

Finn shrugged, staring out the window, at his bare feet, still blinking hard. "I thought I'd just sleep in my car."

"If you think I'm driving you there, you're off your meds. It's in the complete opposite direction. You can sleep in mine." My truck was big enough to hold Finn's lanky frame at least. "Or a bed, if you want to brave the mornings with me."

Finn blanched automatically. "I don't know if I'm up for any more drama, Puck."

"I get that." I wouldn't impose my mother on anybody, least of all someone trying to wallow through their own teenage shit. I sighed, bowed my head to the steering wheel, closed my eyes as if I was praying and not wishing my mother and just about every other adult on earth dead. "God, I can't wait until we get to leave out families."

"Not like we have much family anyway." Finn said, and now he was looking at me. "I mean…Jesus, you have your mom, who is, no offense, pretty much certifiable. My mom will apparently sleep with anyone who'll share a bed with her…"

I ignored that last part, because I knew Finn didn't mean it. He and his mom got on much better than some parent/child situations I'd seen. "My mom _is_ certifiable." I said, just to have something to say.

"You got another cut." Finn pointed out, gesturing at the long thin band around my arm. "She do that?"

"An hour ago, when she thought I was poisoning her dinner." I rubbed my face with one hand. "I'm going to get her admitted to a mental hospital when I'm eighteen. Just got to survive the next thirteen months." It was the surviving part I was a little worried about. She was spiraling down the drain to the Point Of No Return, and one day I'm afraid I'll wake up to find her choking me or stabbing me because she thinks she's a war hero and I'm some fucking Nazi.

Finn looked so _sad_. "I'm sorry, man." He was the only one who knew about me and my mom. She managed to stay sane long enough to hold a nine-to-five secretary job at a nearby hospital. I guess she saved all her crazy for me.

I pointed the car in the direction of home and started off, going about ten miles under the speed limit. No reason to hurry home. "We're pretty fucked up, dude."

Finn let out a sudden burst of hysterical laughter, nodding even as tears were running down his cheeks. Because, at that point, there was no way to fix us, not with me and my mom, who would never be okay again. No way to fix up with Finn and Kurt and whatever craziness was going on in that home/house. At that point, there was only the two of us in a car on the side of the street, two people against problems and issues too big for us, two people who thought that there was no way to ever go home again.

**Last chapter to be posted Wed. It's not the longest story, but it's a little subplot that never really got wrapped up during the season, and we do so love things to be wrapped up...**

**Anyways, please review.**


	4. Finn II

**Finn Hudson**

_There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and the frightened, thoughtless search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own: for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone. **Rod Serling, The Twilight Zone**_

You know things are bad when you linger on the practice fields after school because you literally have nowhere else to go.

It was my all time low. I couldn't help Quinn with her baby, couldn't help Puck with his mom, couldn't even help Mike with his math homework. And I definitely couldn't talk to Kurt.

I'd been practicing in my head all day, when I was taking a shower, when I was walking to class. Ideas and words and sentiments would start running through my head, one right after the other, until there were so many things to say I'd be choked by them all. _Remember to apologize. Remember to empathize. Remember to…_

But when I finally came face-to-face with Kurt, I backed up a step, actually looked around for a quick way out. Kurt's face burned with either shame or anger, but he didn't look away from me, in fact looked like he might have been open to talking. Kurt wasn't one for letting wounds fester.

But I was. And I ran.

Leaving me here, on the field, trying to decide whether to do laps around the field or run up and down the bleachers. I wondered vaguely which one would kill me faster. I wondered vaguely who would care when I died.

My pity party was interrupted by a figure I saw out of the corner of my eye. I swore up and down to Puck that being QB – no matter how bad I was – made my peripheral vision better. Puck said I was full of shit. But I did see Kurt stagger down the gym steps, stumble blindly onto the fields, waver, collapse heavily onto a bench.

This was the cross roads those poems and quotes and PBS messages were always talking about. I could either act and a) be swung at by a very angry, very gay guy or b) be forgiven. Or I could leave Kurt on the bench alone, get in my car and try to see my mom and talk to her about what had happened, forget about the friendship I might have forged with this unlikeliest of people.

And, like that sappy poem we had to read in English, I decided to take the road less traveled by. I swung my bag over my shoulder and took a deep breath, almost forgetting to let it out when I got to the bench Kurt had commandeered.

He was bleeding, steady drips from his forehead and lip with one hell of a shiner over his eye. Raspy breathing and years of watching and sustaining football injuries suggested bruised ribs, if not broken. A hot flame of anger burst in my chest: maybe everything Burt Hummel said about me was true. Maybe I wasn't entirely okay with gay people, and maybe I didn't go out of my way to make life easy for them, but even at our worst, Puck and I had never made Kurt bruised and bloody, not like this.

Kurt suddenly noticed my presence and lifted his head and – I swear to God I'll remember this until I die, that look on his face... – he flinched back, breathing heavier. I could see him calculating the odds, mentally realizing that his ability to flee had vanished along with his ability to draw deep breaths.

When he realized this…it was like the fight went out of him. "Go ahead. Not like I can stop you."

Okay, I know things haven't been right as rain between me and Kurt. I said some pretty nasty stuff at his house and hadn't yet summoned up the courage to apologize. But I wouldn't punch a guy when he was down, and I would never hurt Kurt like he'd obviously just been hurt. Like calling Becky a retard, like all those names I yelled in anger the other night, that would have been cruel.

"I'm not going to hit you." Maybe some of the anger I was feeling came out in my voice, because it was hard, raspy, low, and Kurt flinched again, looking at me with eyes that were just really, really tired. "Kurt…who did this?"

"Doesn't matter."

"It does to me."

He looked at me like he didn't believe me. "Some jocks. Nothing I can't handle." And, man, did I admire him for trying to do this on his own, but he was shaking so bad I thought he was going to fall off the bench. "It's nothing that hasn't happened before."

The sad part was that was undeniably true. "That lip looks pretty bad." I said, because it was the injury that was bugging me the most, that and the whispery, winded quality to his voice. Blood dripped onto his chin and Kurt didn't bother wiping it away.

Kurt shrugged noncommittally.

"You want to go in the locker room? It's always unlocked and there's some wraps in there…it sounds like your ribs can use them." He stared at me, those same tired eyes that were starting to really scare me. "Look, if you can't walk I can help you. I saw you stumbling…"

"What do you want, Finn?" He asked, exasperated. "Why are you doing this? It's not like you haven't thrown me in trashcans yourself."

Except that this wasn't the product of dumpster diving, and we both knew it. But the words hurt lower, deeper. Kurt was dismissing me, writing me off as another person who just wanted to hurt him, who _had_ hurt him. "Kurt…"

"Just go away." Now the tired voice was gone, replaced by tears. "I'll go home when they get out of the parking lot. Just go away."

But I couldn't leave him. Our parents were dating, as much as I disapproved. They might even get married, if I hadn't royally screwed things up with my outburst. That made me and Kurt something. It made us family.

And if that didn't, then Glee did.

So I sat down next to him and carefully, gently, slowly lifted his shirt up. He stiffened and looked up, biting his lip, tears streaming down his face, probably from the helplessness of his situation as much as from the injuries. "Hey, I'm not going to hurt you." I stopped, stared at him until he looked at me. "Kurt, I would never…" Then I glanced down at the bruises.

I had to breathe in through my nose and look away, try to remember the techniques Coach had taught us for going against a team that just won't stop trash talking. Because those injuries were hurting me as much as they were hurting Kurt. When I finally could look at him, I touched the side of his face so he'd look at me. "Kurt, man, your ribs are broken."

His choked sob was almost a laugh, and he tugged his shirt out of my hands, thrust it down and groaned with the pain. "You know, Finn, it's not the bruises that hurt." And I knew what he meant, didn't need for him to continue. He did anyway. "It's not the bruises, or the dumpster diving or the black eyes. It's always, always the names."

Whoever said names will never hurt you had obviously never lived through high school.

"And Finn?" The voice was almost normal, but serious and now not tired, just so damn sad. "You hurt me more than those guys ever could." He caught my gaze, held it. "I thought you were my _friend_. I thought you understood all the crap I have to go through _every day_."

"I'm sorry." I said, quickly, before I forgot all those notes I'd written myself mentally earlier in the day. "I'm sorry for what I said. I was…angry. Not at you. I was just angry, and you were closest." Suddenly the words I'd said rushed between us like a wall, blocking all other sound and thought. The meanness, the cruelty of the statements was appalling.

I knew I didn't deserve forgiveness, but Kurt gave it anyway, though whether it was because he didn't know if he could get off the bench without assistance or because he'd really put our last encounter behind him, I could never tell.

Kurt's face twisted in what might have been an apologetic smile if it hadn't looked like a Halloween mask. "I shouldn't have redone the room without asking you. It did end up looking kind of…gay. I got Mercedes' opinion."

I touched his leg in a place I hoped had no bruises. "I really am sorry. And I hate what these guys did to you."

He quirked a quick pseudo-smile again. "And I wish I was kidding when I said it's happened before." He looked helplessly down at his body. "Wish I was kidding when I say I can't really make it that far if you don't help me."

Another flair of anger and sudden concern that something worse, much worse, than a single high school beating had taken place surged. I searched Kurt's face, panicked. "Can you stand? Did they…?" I couldn't speak the words over the sound of blood pumping in my ears. I'd end them. I'd kill them.

"What?" For a second, it was simple, utter confusion, then there was an almost visual click. "No. _No_. I don't think they would ever go that far." A sigh, this one of humiliation, embarrassment, and for the first time Kurt turned away from me, moaning a bit as his ribs clattered in his chest. "They had me on the ground and kicked me a few times. The bruises are probably there already."

I wish he could tell me who they were. I wish that just once I could actually take down the foe hurting my friends. "I can get you to your house. I'll have Puck swing by later with your car."

And then a level of forgiveness I couldn't possibly deserve. "Our house, Finn." At my surprise, another slight smile, this one more forced. The pain was getting worse. "I can't be the cause of my dad breaking up with your mom. I'll have to convince him, but I'm pretty sure he'll let you stay on probation if we talk up the knight in shining armor routine."

I was far from a knight in shining armor, but I knew an olive branch when I saw one. It was surprisingly hard to get words around the lump in my throat. "Thank you, Kurt." Nothing was okay, not really. Quinn was still sixteen and pregnant. Puck was still trapped with his crazy mother. I had still screamed awful words at someone who should have been my friend. Kurt would still get beat up every week, but maybe between Puck and I we could make it less often, could make sure it didn't escalate to the point where we could no longer put Kurt back together with friendly gestures and Band-Aids.

It was hard to figure out how to get Kurt to the car without causing more pain (I ended up carrying him). It was harder to walk across the fields, listening to his sharp intakes of breath that meant that he was hurting. It was harder still to listen to Burt's fair arguments about me staying in the same house as his only son.

In the end, we ended up in the same spot as the night before. I was in Kurt's redecorated room, thinking about Puck/Quinn/Rachel/Kurt. It was exactly the same, except that I was regretting like hell most of the things I'd done over the last twenty-four hours. Yelling at Kurt. Leaving. Not talking to him during the school day…

"Thanks for helping me today, Finn." Kurt's voice drifted, unanchored in the darkness, but it was as honest and earnest as anything he'd ever said. "I couldn't have…I mean…thanks."

I smiled, turned onto my side and flicked on the lamp light, illuminating that god-awful room. And Kurt and I talked, quietly, not yelling, getting both sides out. We talking as the numbers on the clock crept past midnight. We talked like best friends wanting to make up after a fight.

Neither of us had ever had a sibling, but near the end of the night I confessed that, perhaps, this would be something like a conversation between brothers.

Kurt agreed. And never in my life had I regretted a lost night of sleep less.

**The End.**

**Four chapters is not a lot, but, again, it's a side story that we hope Glee, in its infinate wisdom, will get around to clearing up next season. Here's wishing a happy and safe summer to all Gleeks!**


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